Alien: Isolation

If first person survival mixed with horror is your sort of thing, then Alien: Isolation, based off of the Alien franchise, should be an interesting title. Developed by The Creative Assembly and released in October 2014, Alien: Isolation has won numerous awards from Game Of The Year to several top 10s/25s and Best Horror titles, ratcheting up over a million sales by February 2015. Alien: Isolation uses a custom built engine which includes dynamic sound effects and should be fully multi-core enabled.

Alien Isolation on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560)

Alien Isolation on MSI R9 290X Gaming LE 4GB ($380)

Total War: Attila

The Total War franchise moves on to Attila, another The Creative Assembly development, and is a stand-alone strategy title set in 395AD where the main story line lets the gamer take control of the leader of the Huns in order to conquer parts of the world. Graphically the game can render hundreds/thousands of units on screen at once, all with their individual actions and can put some of the big cards to task.

For low end graphics, we test at 720p with performance settings, recording the average frame rate. With mid and high range graphics, we test at 1080p with the quality setting. In both circumstances, unlimited video memory is enabled and the in-game scripted benchmark is used.

Total War: Attila on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560)

Total War: Attila on MSI R9 290X Gaming LE 4GB ($380)

Grand Theft Auto V

The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise finally hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.

For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark, relying only on the final part which combines a flight scene along with an in-city drive-by followed by a tanker explosion. For low end systems we test at 720p on the lowest settings, whereas mid and high-end graphics play at 1080p with very high settings across the board. We record both the average frame rate and the percentage of frames under 60 FPS (16.6ms).

Grand Theft Auto V on ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB ($560)

Grand Theft Auto V on MSI R9 290X Gaming LE 4GB ($380)

Professional Performance on Linux Gaming, Cont: GRID: Autosport & Shadow of Mordor
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  • redfirebird15 - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    There is data in the bench for 1070 and 1080 founders editions. The 1070 is on par with the 980ti, and the 1080 beats it in all categories. Review complete.
  • HOOfan 1 - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    I imagine they are getting more clicks without it being posted, than they would with it being posted.

    Once it is posted, people will read it and move on. Now people have to stop by every day to ask "are they finally done yet?"
  • Impulses - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    I get the impatience, even tho there's plenty of other places with decent reviews, but the aggressive and entitled attitude is a little bizarre. You can't every buy the cards right now, and you'd be silly to overpay for a Founder's already, so why are you stressing so much and spamming every other article about it?
  • SkiBum1207 - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    Good quality reporting and reviewing takes a TON of time. Doing benches aren't as simple as firing up a few runs of 3DMark and calling it a day. Then on top of that, there's the analysis, conversations with the manufacturer to clear up any issues, and writing it in clear and concise prose.

    That's not easy to do. You can get raw benchmarks anywhere online, but getting actual deep analysis by people who actually understand their respective fields? That is hard to find.

    Anandtech has always had a hallmark of taking their time, doing their research, and not shoving out hacked together reviews/articles. If anything, they have gotten better over time, rather than "used to be better".

    @HOOfan1, that's literally the opposite of how journalism online works. The quantity of people who rapid-refresh a page for a single article is a vast minority in comparison to once an article is published. That's one of the reasons why publish-fast, fact check later publishing has become more prevalent.

    @Ryan - I know things have gotten "noisier" the past 5 or so years on the internet and in the comments, but there are still some absolutely loyal readers which absolutely appreciate the work and detail you put into each article. Thank you, and keep up the amazing work.
  • Eden-K121D - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link

    You want a deep dive into pascal read this https://images.nvidia.com/content/pdf/tesla/whitep...
  • HOOfan 1 - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link

    Plenty of other sites have given a lot more than benchmarks. Maybe not as much as a typical anandtech article, but certainly much more than just "raw benchmarks".

    Is George RR Martin writing graphics card reviews on the side?

    Anandtech doesn't owe us anything, but I would say the fact that people are frustrated that there is no full review yet shows they are loyal readers. If they weren't loyal readers, they just wouldn't care.
  • HollyDOL - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    Ouch, this definitely puts high perf line both out of my reach and interest.
  • jabber - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    Glad I didn't bother waiting when I bought the 5820k last month.
  • getho - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link

    Bonkers. I was holding out for this, but was forced to replace my 1366 system this year (and went with 5820). THere is no way i would've contemplated dropping $1700 on a CPU. If it was twice as fast, maybe. Even at $999 i think i'd look at dual xeons - and probably second hand at that.
  • adamod - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link

    ive got an hp z600 with dual x5660's that consistently run at 3.1ghz al cores at 100 percent load...i love it....cheap r9 280x in there and a pair of ssds and its prety damn quick.....graphic card is older and kinda sucks but it DOES play crysis at 1080P which is, well just ok.....point is i plan to get a 1070 for it and i dont expect i will need to upgrade for another 5 years for gaming and CAD work that i do

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